


and slowly it unfolds

by toujours_nigel



Category: Night Watch - Sarah Waters
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Butch/Femme, F/F, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3246443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for the prompt: Kay/Julia telepathy</p>
    </blockquote>





	and slowly it unfolds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [filia_noctis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/gifts).



> for the prompt: Kay/Julia telepathy

Kay woke up with murder on her mind. That would be strange enough if directed at someone, since getting out of bed, into her clothes, and down the stairs often represented the sum of her daily achievements. Shifting into what Mickey describes as _proper digs at last_ and out of her miserable room at Lavender Hill had put paid to her perambulations about the city. Then, too, the ruins of her life had shifted, and somewhere beneath the rubble life was painfully birthing itself. An exhausting business, labour, and but for Mickey squawking over her like the unlikeliest midwife, she would have collapsed in a welter or blood and memory. Where would she scrape the energy for murder _from_?

But it wasn’t that, not anything remotely personal. Instead she was thinking _no that’s no good that can’t be traced back_ and _how am I going to hide the dagger_ and _Mrs. Parkinson isn’t even going to be there_ and _what about the motive it’s no good imputing jealousy_ and _jealousy of what for Christ’s sake_ in a voice that sounded nothing like her own and horribly nicotine-deprived. She didn’t even know a Mrs. Parkinson. And all the business about jealousy and daggers was far too premeditated for her taste. Hot blood or nothing. Probably nothing, she hadn’t even struck Julia, _then_.

About an hour in the voice said, _well, isn’t **she** lovely_ and enumerated an array of charms and graces Kay found distinctly unattractive and exceedingly familiar. Long limbs, a boyish figure, and a stern face with good bones exposed by a severely mannish haircut were solid enough descriptors of her, after all, and not calculated to arouse desire. Kay liked them womanly, if not necessarily either blonde or plump. It felt disconcertingly narcissistic, therefore, to realize that underneath the layers of waistcoat, shirt, and undershirt, her nipples were tightening and her skin tingling at the sight of, the thought of, a white throat visible through an open collar, the breadth of shoulders in a tailored jacket, and the strong line of an epicene profile turned skyward to exhale a pillar of smoke.

“I think I’m going mad,” she informed Mickey over breakfast, absently sweetening her coffee far beyond her usual measure.

“ _Going_?” Mickey retorted, snide and immediate, and then frowned direly. “What is it, then?”

“I keep hearing voices. Well, one voice, really. Mickey, no, it can’t be that, don’t be absurd.”

“I never said anything,” Mickey pointed out, which was true if only in the technical sense, and paused in the systematic demolition of her toast. “Here, you aren’t thinking about carburettors, are you?”

“Not hardly,” Kay said dully. “Murders and butches and the occasional heap of clothes. Mick, it _can’t_ be that. I’m too old, for one thing.”

Mickey reached across the table and very carefully extracts the cup from Kay’s hands. “Never knew there to be a fixed age,” she pointed out peaceably. “Wouldn’t happen now if now weren’t the right time.”

“It’s absurd. The percentages alone... and you know I’ve never believed in that sort of thing.” It wasn’t quite true, but she hadn’t believed since she was a child, as indeed who could, in the magic that let two minds speak each to each if only they were enough alike. With Helen she had hoped so fervently, and all to no avail.

“You won’t know till you’ve tried. I doubt it’s a matter of belief.” Then she said, boyishly sincere in the way it made it hard to deny her, “I would give my right hand to hear my Voice. Plenty would.”

_Plenty never will_ , that sentence went. Well, it wasn’t anything they didn’t know. The newspapers had been full of it, during—pictures of people frantically searching the lists of dead soldiers for a name that had whispered itself in their minds before falling forever silent—and now it was the only socially permissible register in which to talk about the War. Kay and Mickey of course had seen it oftener than anyone not on active duty and more frequently, doubtless, than some that were. Fear of death, impending death, often eased open doors that life had blocked up with clutter, and in terror more minds were alike than not. People died whispering the names of absolute strangers while lovers and children stared in horror, or came out of surgery with the very memory of it wiped away. Maybe they heard it again in nightmares, or went looking in secret. Kay didn’t care to find out.

“What does one do,” she said at length, when it became clear that Mickey would sit indefinitely staring at her. At the station it had been a not infrequent game, and Mickey had excelled at it as Hughes at scaring the skin off anyone. “Really, it’s absurd. I must have dyspepsia or something.”

“Funny sort of dyspepsia. Look, do the thing or don’t, but don’t sit here thinking it over eternally.” She climbed a little ponderously to her feet, and rubbed her hands together to rid herself of stray crumbs. “Well, some of us have to work for our bread.”

“You’re not among them,” Kay said, on surer ground now. “I’ve told you...”

“And I’ve told you that if I wanted to be someone’s kept woman, I’ve had better offers than you. We’ll go to the Gates for a drink when I’m back, Wednesday so it doesn’t matter about dress.”

“I don’t know,” Kay called to her retreating back, “whether I’ll want to go.”

“You’ll come,” Mickey said, above the sounds of the front door unlocking. “Yes, Mrs. Finkel, just off to work, give you a lift?”

It was absurd. Absurd and blind and _stupid_. Kay washed her hands, her face, changed into a fresher shirt and contemplated combing her hair, contemplated chucking the whole thing and going out. All through the conversation with Mickey, disparate shreds of thought about murder had been knitting themselves into a plot that felt achingly familiar in style, and now there was a waiting, a space and impatient vigil for inspiration in the mind that Spoke in hers. She remembered that, too, though from the outside it had looked rather more like fidgeting.

Kay took the precaution of dropping into a chair and gripping the arms tight, so blood drained from her raised knuckles, and thought, loud and terrified, _Julia?_

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mary Oliver's 'White Eyes' (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/30876)


End file.
